


Miracles

by stateofintegrity



Category: Rush (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 19:16:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9137677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stateofintegrity/pseuds/stateofintegrity
Summary: A New Year's party has unexpected consequences.





	

Miracles

(will have their claimers)

 

            There was still confetti in the young singer’s dark hair. The discordant jangling of noisemakers – whistles, spinners, and horns – still rang in his ears, just under the desperate thundering of his heart. His hands were shaking, fingers almost blue in their paleness, and he blinked away sparkling visions that seemed only half true. He remembered the heat of the room, bodies dancing, pressing in, the sugary smell of champagne making the air tangy.

            He skipped over the next part, knowing any investigation would scald his fingers. Too personal to remember now, too _painful_ …

            Running for the door, running like he’d run from his schoolyard tormenters, he crashed through into the winter night, sky like a lake that had frozen, jealously imprisoning the diamond stars. That first sharp breath of winter air almost made him double over. Then the wind hit, driving knives into his chest cavity, but he didn’t dare go back inside for his coat, didn’t dare meet anyone’s eyes. Such a stupid mistake, stupid loss of control…

He couldn’t remember how he’d maneuvered the sports car down the snow-choked lane, headlights turning the snow blue-white. Then it was just him against the winter road, flying down and away from Neil’s lakehouse, fishtailing the entire way back to the suburbs, wishing the entire time that he’d just lose control. Being buried in a snow drift seemed preferable to facing up what he’d just revealed, what he’d allowed himself to become. Shaken to the core, he didn’t even turn on the heater. When he slid into his driveway – a miracle in itself – he had to pry his fingers off of the steering wheel.   

            Inside, he stood lonely and baffled, blinking against the midnight brightness, wanting to sink through the floor. _What do I do now?_ he wondered. Not even a glimmering of an answer came to him and he shivered, afraid. _Am I going to lose him? Lose Rush?_ The thought was enough to make him sob, but no tears came. He was wrung out, exhausted by his terrible trespass, his flight through winter darkness.

            He jumped when the phone rang. Sparkling pieces of confetti drifted to the kitchen floor and glinted back up at him. Hoping against hope, he lifted the receiver, but his voice refused to speak that name, _his_ name. When he swallowed it was broken glass and golden razor wire, the bitter, bloody taste of his broken heart. In the moments that followed, his silence didn’t matter. The voice on the other end did all the talking – yelling, actually. He couldn’t protest, but he winced and flinched away from the sound, and tears obscured the unusual pear wine color of his eyes. The conversation didn’t make sense, heard through static and pain, but what he did hear would echo in his ears long after the phone was slammed back down: “protect the band’s image,” “scandal,” “queer,” “ _damage control_ …” When the voice receded, he sank down, sliding down the cupboard to the floor.

“I didn’t mean it,” he murmured to the empty room. “I didn’t mean _anything_ …”  


 When the phone rang a second time, he almost let it scream itself silent. But there was still the hope that it could be _him_ , that he could salvage this whole thing, explain. “ ’lo?” he managed, trying to sound like there weren’t tears running down his face.

“Dirk?” a familiar voice asked. “Dirk, are you okay? You made it home safe? I was so worried!”

It almost made him laugh. How safe could he be after what he’d done? “I’m okay,” he managed, the words interrupted by a soft sort of hiccoughing sob.

“You sound it,” said the drummer sarcastically. “But if it helps at all, Ged, I’m _so_ proud of you.”

Confusion shone in his eyes, his sharp features. “Proud?” he ventured, as though feeling his way out on a rotten limb. The word didn’t seem to match any part of his actions – those years of hiding, one brief, painful, beautiful trespass, his flight…

“Geddy, I always knew,” said the drummer, voice gentle.

He shook his muddled head, teary vision swimming. Hell, Neil knew everything else, so why not the great secret of his soul? “You don’t…” he couldn’t finish the sentence. If Neil said that he thought it was wrong, he knew it would break him. “But what about the band? Aren’t you mad?”

Neil’s voice hardened like cement. “Ray called you.”

He didn’t even have time to respond before the percussionist launched into a tirade against their manager. “Bigoted asshole!” he finished. “He tried to fire you once, Dirk. I want you to know that I’d be with you if you want to return the favor. _2112_ is doing wonderfully so the record company won’t kick up any dust about it.”

With snowmelt around his shoes and a whirring dizziness in his brain that had nothing to do with the New Year’s champagne he’d sipped, Geddy was in no condition to contemplate a managerial coup. In fact, in all the world, he only really wanted to know about one thing. “Pratt, how’s Alex?”

“Stunned, for sure,” he admitted, but he sounded pleased about it. “And he drank too much. I put him to bed upstairs.”

“Maybe he won’t remember,” the singer murmured, mostly to himself.

Pratt laughed across the winter night. “Jackie and I felt the fireworks and we were on the other side of the room. A couple of drinks aren’t going to erase a kiss like that, Dirk. And if they did, _I’d_ remind him. You deserve to be happy.”

Though he appreciated the sentiment, Geddy wasn’t entirely sure his best friend and bandmate would feel the same way.”Did I bust up your party?” he asked shyly.

“Hell, no! Most everyone was too drunk to notice – or too busy messing with streamers and noisemakers – you picked a good moment. You did scare me half to death when you bolted out of here. What is with you and driving those stupid little sports cars in the snow, anyway?!”

Geddy’s little laugh came warm to the drummer’s ears, telling him that, for all he’d dared, he was going to be alright. “I-I think I was compensating for something,” he admitted, laughter punctuating his words. “Trying to prove I was like everyone else.” It was an image he’d shattered tonight.

“Please. If you were like everyone else, you couldn’t even _be_ in Rush,” Neil teased.

Geddy chewed at his bottom lip, hoping such words weren’t prophetic. Rush was, technically, Alex’s band. Would he get rid of him over one kiss?

Lost in thought, he barely heard Neil tell him that he should go get some sleep. “Things will be fine, Dirk,” he told him. “You’ll see.”

As he replaced the phone, he couldn’t help but wonder if “fine” would ever be quite enough. Hadn’t “fine” always been what he’d accepted? It had been fine when Alex had dated in high school and he hadn’t, fine when girls had stared dreamily up from the audience at the guitarist, fine when he’d laughed and joked and played side by side with the love of his life year after year – without Alex ever realizing. With _2112_ winning them fans and freedom from the record company, 1977 promised to be, musically, much more than fine. But what did it all mean, really, if he had to keep on being lonely?  

Drawing himself up from the floor, he shivered, having grown cold. His steps were heavy as he took himself up to bed. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t weathered nights alone before, but now, with it all out in the open, it felt so unfair. He left the lights out as he entered his bedroom. Though he didn’t usually go in for luxury, his sleeping space was an incredibly comfortable – a reaction, perhaps, to too many nights spent in hotel rooms. Under his feet, the green carpeting was grass-lush, and heavy green drapes closed out the night that he wanted so badly to forget. Turning the knob on the fireplace, he let a small flame kindle itself in the grate, then crawled into bed. Pulling the covers over his head, he hoped that somehow _this_ year’s actions would have no sway over the year that would soon dawn.

Overwrought, the singer shivered under the covers. But the cold had nothing to do with the room or the winter night – the cold was inside, a gem-hard and frozen place in him, the place that told him that he’d finally lost all – for good.

Tears were rising, anew, in his eyes, when he heard the scatterings of frozen rain against the window. _Good_ , he thought moodily, _at least I’ll be frozen in tomorrow. No visitors._ But then he noticed that the sound he’d taken for sleet came intermittently. Deciding it must be the wind, he rolled over, burrowing deeper into the covers. Silence settled again and the something cracked against the glass so hard that he jumped. Leaving his bed, he walked to the window and looked down to a lawn buried in snow, all in midnight shades of blue and silver. And in the center of all that shining, golden mane offset by a street lamp, stood Lerxst. “Oh, hell,” Geddy whispered to himself before half-running, half-stumbling down the stairs.

 

With snow-melt in his hair and a cocky grin lighting his face, Alex seemed to glow on his doorstep. Geddy quietly hoped it was just holiday confetti – his best friend didn’t _actually_  shine, did he? That would just be too much, especially since that light was about to recede from his life forever, probably leaving him with a wounded jaw in the process. But Alex just grinned wider still, shaking his head at him in a way that seemed gentle, even… fond. “You gonna let me come in or what?” he finally asked.

“You’re supposed to be drunk,” Geddy heard himself say stupidly. “And at Neil’s.”

Laughing, Alex bullied his way inside, bringing Geddy along with him. “I had to _play_ drunk, sure, or Pratt would have wanted to _talk to me about it_ – and I thought you and I should be allowed to get a word in before he started prattling away.”

“So, what? You snuck out?”

“You shouldn’t be so surprised. I used to sneak out to see you all the time. And it was easier to sneak out of Pratt’s than it was to get by my mom, let me tell you. And before you start worrying, I left him a note.”

The words “to see you” were stumbling through Geddy’s mind. _But he can’t mean them like that, like they sound. What is he even doing here?_

For his part, Alex felt kind of flattered that his oldest and dearest (in more ways than Geddy apparently realized) best friend looked so dazzled. Deciding that he did sing that “you can be the, Captain,” line so prettily, he gently took charge of the situation and directed Geddy to the kitchen. A look at the clock said that it was going on two o’clock in the morning, which probably wasn’t a very official tea time. Shrugging, Alex set about making some anyway, which caused Geddy to surface long enough to protest that it was _his_ house – Alex shouldn’t be treating _him_ like company!

“Please. Your hands are shaking so bad you’d break the cups. If I tell you that I liked it, kissing you, would that help you settle down at all?”

Geddy drew in a sharp breath and seemed to forget how to exhale.

“I guess not…”

“You… you kissed _me_?”

“It seemed like the appropriate response – you did have your tongue in my mouth, after all. I’m kind of disappointed though – it must not have been much of a kiss if you didn’t even _notice.”_

“I think I was busy having an aneurysm,” Geddy defended himself, his dry wit shining through at last and letting his best friend know that he was okay after all.

“Aneurysm? Hmm. I was aiming more for _orgasm_ , but it’s a start, I guess.”

Geddy wanted to tease back, to say that he would be glad to help him improve his aim, but he could only stare, open-mouthed. Alex just sipped at his tea, imagining what he could _do_ with such a pretty mouth. Finally, Geddy managed a syllable or two. “So… you… I mean… you’re _here_.”

Reaching across the table, Alex squeezed his hand. “And I would have been here all along if I knew, Dirk. I never meant for you to be lonely. Although I guess I can’t say much – you were the brave one tonight.”

“It was more desperate than brave,” the singer admitted shyly, lowering his eyes. Though he hated to be deprived of that rich, green soulscape, Alex took the moment to admire his gentle friend – the flash of a pulse in his long, pale throat, the soft, dark fall of his hair. He wanted to trace every part of that long-loved face, to show Geddy through touch how perfect he was.

“I just wish you’d have given me a minute to react. You were out of there so fast… and I just stood there. I’ve never ached over someone before, Ged, but I swear, having you out of my arms was awful – and then I was worried you’d get hurt.”

“What would you have done if I’d stayed?” Geddy practically whispered, sounding awed at unimagined possibilities.

“Well, I would have gotten you away from all those people… upstairs somewhere where we could talk. I would have told you… well, all the things I came here to tell you. And then I would have made love to you.” He winked, a bright blue flash. “See what you missed?”

“We couldn’t have sex in Pratt’s house!” Geddy exclaimed, amazed that they were even talking about such a thing. Alex still felt just like his best friend.

Gentle eyes held his and the guitarist sounded almost husky when he asked, “Would you have wanted to wait?”

Swallowing, Geddy whispered, “No.”

“So can I talk to you now without you running away again?”

Geddy nodded, eyes wide. His mouth was apparently on auto-pilot, because he heard himself ask, “Just talk?”

“You drive a _hard_ bargain, Dirk. Alright. Will you agree not to run away if I promise to spend the night with you driving you out of your mind?”

Smiling, Geddy said that he thought he could agree to that.

Standing, Alex held out a hand. Geddy eyed it for a long moment, unsteady and unsure. When he finally grabbed hold, Alex hauled him to his feet and led him up the stairs. “You have confetti in your hair, you know,” he told him, breathing the words into his neck.

Geddy didn’t know what the answer to _that_ was. He was too busy being blown away by the fact/sensation that he was hand in hand with the only lover he’d ever wanted. But Alex wasn’t done.

“You should let me wash it.”

He froze, startled.

“I’ve always wanted to.”

“Oh…kay…”

Pleased, Alex steered him into the bathroom. Geddy had always had good taste. The entire room was some sort of faux green marble, a dark and gleaming cave. Flipping on the heater, the guitarist crossed his long legs beside the bathtub and played with the water until he found the right temperature. Then he turned, eyes smiling, to Geddy. “Come on, then.”

He swallowed. Could he do this? Just undress in front of Alex? Well, he’d done it before, but that was when Alex hadn’t _known_.

“I think you’re incredibly beautiful,” said the guitarist, voice soft, mellow, and intoxicating as moonlight on new snow. “You don’t have to be shy.”

Unable to doubt his friend no matter how much he wanted to, Geddy lifted his shirt over his head. Confetti rained down as it caught his hair, some of it coming to dapple his milky shoulders like stars. Alex held his breath as he undid the button on his jeans, watching hungrily as his hands lifted away from the zipper. He found himself dry-mouthed and wanting to burrow into the soft curls adorning (almost _adoring_ , it seemed) his friend’s sex. He was still wide eyed when Geddy slipped into the steaming water.

Dipping his hands into the warmth, he rubbed the soreness from Geddy’s neck until he had almost bent over into the water. Then, shielding his eyes with his hand, he dampened the long, dark tresses and began to massage shampoo into them. Geddy made pleased, musical noises under his touch and Alex smiled. _It’s been a long time since someone spoiled you, Dirk._

Gold and magenta sparkles floated on the water.

“This is really, really nice,” Geddy said at last.

Alex nipped at his shoulder, the first trespass he’d made. “This is just the beginning. Want to come out of there and climb into bed with me?”

Geddy almost slipped standing up and Alex smiled at his eagerness, wrapping him in a lush towel. He even submitted to having his hair toweled out. Together, they made their way out of the steamy bath and toward a wider reality.

Alex smiled approvingly at the bedroom. “A fire – nice.” Then, apropos of nothing, he began to shed his clothes. Geddy gaped. There was no shame in his friend and no hesitation. In a few moments all that Alex had been wearing was folded up neatly on a chair.

“It didn’t seem fair,” he explained to his wide-eyed friend. “To leave you naked all alone.”

Laughing, Geddy crawled into the covers. “I’ve heard of underwear parties – but no-underwear-at-all parties?”

“We’ll start a new trend,” the guitarist said, joining him. “Can I hold you now or will it freak you out?”

“Me? Freak out? Surely not!” Geddy joked back, weakly.

Alex pulled his damp head down against his chest. “I love you, Dirk. I always have. I wish I’d known you felt the same, then we really could have kissed at midnight last night – and all the other times, too.”

Geddy could feel the movements of his stomach as he breathed, could hear Alex’s huge, golden heart echoing into his own. For the first time since people had shouted the New Year in, he let himself relax. Alex must have felt it because he chuckled and loosened his grip. Geddy reached out and hauled the covers up around them. The firelight danced on the coverlet until it seemed to be in motion, like warm waves.

“Remember doing this when we were kids?” Alex asked into the hushed world – all snowfall beyond the windows and the crackle of flames.

Geddy gave him a teasingly aghast look. “Not _naked_ , I don’t!”

“Please. Those ratty pajamas we had were thin enough. We could have had a lot of fun if I’d have known we were on the same wavelength.”

Geddy shook his head at him, asked softly, “Haven’t we always been?” Best friend persona overtaking him, he added, “And who says I was in love with you way back then?”

“Weren’t you?”

That look, that tone… his abdomen clenched as he remembered Alex holding onto his hands, asking him to sing. “Won’t you?” the guitarist had asked and he’d been so twisted up by love and lust that he would have agreed to any surrender, any challenge. “Loving you is going to be harder than I thought,” he admitted. “I can never get away with anything when you look at me like that!”

A Lerxstish light lit his gentle face. “I know. So, were you or not?”

The singer squirmed a little, bashful despite their shared state of undress. “Remember those wish candles we used to light this time of year? The bayberry ones?”

“You always had me light them.”

“Yeah. For good luck. The only thing I was wishing for was you.”

It was the signal, the switch, the magical phrase that reassured Alex in the love he’d carried in every guitar case, the love he’d voiced in every chorus, trying to get Geddy to see there onstage and sing it back to him. Love-lit and delighted, he pounced his slighter friend and lost himself to the satiny labyrinth of his hair, the unexplored acres of soft flesh gone crème under the firelight. Their mouths came together until he was breathing the singer down in place of air, choking and gasping on joy.

Alex has always been a force in Geddy’s life, a wave of energy and sound that carried him forward. He let himself be caught up. He came open like a night-blooming flower. He soared and surged up and might have even sang something. His fingers made motions of worship across his best friend’s back.

“I want to do everything with you,” Alex murmured into his neck.

He would have allowed everything – would have welcomed it all at once. His body quivered and shined against his friend’s softness and he knew that Alex could bring him off with a word.

Not that he planned to go down alone.

A hissing breath escaped the guitarist. “Oh, god, like that!” he mewled, grinding into the warm cave Geddy had made of his fingers. “What’d you do? Practice!?”

Head thrown back, acting purely on touch, Geddy gave into a smile. Alex was only complaining because he was being sweetly overthrown; all of his everything’s were being surrendered to the need to come inside of Geddy’s hand. Chin on his chest, Alex managed to lift his eyes and shoot him a scolding look. “I’m supposed to be the one with good hands, Dirk.”

Bravery restored by the miracle of Alex’s presence, he managed a slow, luxurious shrug. “So crawl up here and put it in my mouth if you think it’ll be better. If you can.”

Alex clenched his eyes in frustration. His best fantasies erased themselves in shame, perfectly inadequate against such words as “put it in my mouth” spoken in that voice, all silver dissolved into champagne. Disarmed by those clever digits velvet-rubbing up and down his too-hard shaft, he decided to return fire. If he’d believed that either of them could handle it after the frantic make-out session Gedd’s confessed wishes had brought about, he would have lifted himself up and taken the bassist inside. He doubted that the pain of it would have even registered. Deciding to save the trick, he managed to slide down Geddy’s body without drawing out of his hand. The taut sacs between his legs protested the motion; subtle vibrations were a torture to them now – they knew he was holding back purely on principle, wanting to make Geddy give it up first.

The first taste made him jerk backward a little; the heat of it was unfamiliar and the silky hair tickled his nose. He acclimated himself by exploring with his tongue, popping back up to tell Geddy that he tiny, star-shaped confetti had found its way to his cock; his pale skin was adorned with the flashes of tiny fireworks, foil stars that caught the light. “It’s really beautiful,” Alex said, swallowing him, and Geddy couldn’t tell if he meant the unconventional decoration or the sight of him hard and leaking for the kind of kiss they never would have gotten away with at the party.

Lost to the way Alex was moving up and down on him, Geddy echoed the motions on his shaft and prepared to fly apart. “…love you, Ali,” he managed, breath coming as hard as he hoped to.

Snapped out of his task by those longed for words, Alex climbed back up him to smash him into the pillows with a sloppy kiss even as he stroked him into the climax he’d begun with his mouth.

Fireworks and confetti now firmly in his eyes, the guitarist contentedly surveyed the wreckage. “It’s messy when we come at the same time,” he informed his bedmate matter-of-factly.

Glittering with the spill of their shared tribute, Geddy managed to laugh beneath the stickiness. “You came first.”

Sensing a Lerxstian game in the making, Alex pretended to think about it. “Yeah, but you only started to move your hand that fast because my _head_ was moving that fast…”

Geddy held up a hand. “Stop! I haven’t recovered enough for you to start this all over again. We should have saved the bath until after.”

Now the guitarist was _all_ curiosity. “Could you go again?”

“Right now?” he asked weakly.

“Tonight.”

“It’s already morning, I think, but yeah. If you give me fifteen minutes and a view.”

Alex smiled at that. “This could be a very happy New Year, Ged. And a happy Valentine’s Day, and St. Patrick’s…”

Groaning, Geddy let himself be cleaned up and seduced to the rug in front of the fireplace.

 

End!


End file.
